Summary
In Bullock, the defendant negligently parked the bus on which plaintiff was a passenger in a restricted zone, and this wrongful act was the cause of the minor plaintiff crossing the street at the particular point where a negligent motorist ran him down.
Summary of this case from CLARK v. EPCO, INC.Opinion
No. 35308.
April 12, 1943.
1. CARRIERS.
In action for death of boy who had alighted from defendant's bus and was struck by an automobile while attempting to run across highway to rear of bus, fact that rear end of bus blocked part of highway, in violation of statute, was not "proximate cause" of injury, so as to charge bus company with liability for boy's death (Laws 1938, ch. 200, sec. 90).
2. NEGLIGENCE.
Where one is negligent, and another, acting independently and voluntarily, puts in motion another and intervening cause which efficiently leads in unbroken sequence to injury, the latter is the "proximate cause" and the original negligence is a "remote" and nonactionable cause.
3. NEGLIGENCE.
Negligence which merely furnishes condition or occasion upon which injuries are received, but does not put in motion agency by or through which injuries are inflicted, is not the "proximate cause" thereof.
4. CARRIERS.
Where bus with front exit, in stopping to allow 12-year-old boy to alight, stopped with front end of bus on gravel shoulder away from paved portion of highway, and thereby provided boy with safe place to stand, relation between carrier and boy as a "passenger" terminated when boy alighted, and carrier had right to assume that boy would so remain standing until bus moved away in manner customary with bus and street car passengers when alighting.
5. CARRIERS.
Where bus, in stopping to allow 12-year-old boy to alight therefrom, stopped with front end of bus on shoulder and provided boy with safe place to stand until bus moved away, act of boy of his own volition in passing rapidly down side of bus and out from its rear into traveled portion of highway, where he was struck and killed, set in operation "intervening independent cause" for which carrier was not liable.
6. CARRIERS.
Generally, where bus stops in an unlawful position, but discharges passenger in a safe place, and passenger of his own volition walks to place of danger where he is struck and injured, the injury is the "remote" and not the "proximate consequence" of negligent or unlawful position in which bus was stopped.
7. CARRIERS.
Where bus driver stops bus so as to discharge passenger in a safe place, he is under no duty to warn such passenger of danger of approaching vehicles on traveled portion of highway.
8. CARRIERS.
Negligence cannot be imputed to bus driver who drove bus to a place safe for passengers to alight by reason of opening bus door and allowing 12-year-old boy to alight when an approaching automobile on a heavily traveled highway was in sight, since carrier has duty to transport passengers with reasonable degree of dispatch, as well as duty of care as to safety of passengers.
9. CARRIERS.
Duty of care required of common carrier by motorbus is that which at same time is consistent with practical conduct of its authorized business.
10. CARRIERS.
A bus company is under no obligation to transport a 12-year-old boy with any more care or consideration than an adult, which duty is to exercise care to carry him to destination within a reasonable time.
11. CARRIERS.
On issue of proximate cause of death of 12-year-old boy who after alighting from bus ran behind the bus and onto highway where he was struck and killed, question of whether boy was of such age as to be chargeable with contributory negligence was immaterial.
APPEAL from the circuit court of Forrest county, HON. F.B. COLLINS, Judge.
Hannah, Simrall Foote, of Hattiesburg, for appellant.
Appellees conceive that the bus company owed a larger measure of duty, and a different duty, to this little boy of twelve years than it owed to adult passengers. Such a conception is erroneous.
Gage v. Illinois Cent. R. Co., 75 Miss. 17, 21 So. 657; Tri-State Transit Co. of Louisiana v. Lee, 191 Miss. 42, 2 So.2d 547.
The duty of a common carrier of passengers includes an obligation to furnish them a safe place in which to alight, so far as that place is provided by it or is affected or conditioned by the movement of the vehicle, and that duty is only satisfied if it exercises the highest degree of care and skill which reasonably may be expected of intelligent and prudent persons engaged in such a business, in view of the instrumentalities employed and the dangers naturally to be apprehended. When, however, the duty of the carrier to provide a safe place to alight has been fulfilled, and the passenger has left the vehicle, it ceases to owe to him any duty other than that which it owes to any person coming within the range of its activities, not to do him injury by a failure to exercise reasonable care.
Roden v. Connecticut Co., 113 Conn. 408, 155 A. 721; Waldron v. Southwestern Bus Co., 42 Ohio App. 549, 182 N.E. 596; Lewis v. Pacific Greyhound Lines, 147 Or. 588, 34 P.2d 616, 96 A.L.R. 718; Hennessey v. Intermountain Transp. Co. and Pierre v. Intermountain Transp. Co. (Mont.), 102 P.2d 489; Jordan v. Wiggins, 66 Ga. App. 534, 18 S.E.2d 512; Bistany v. Bennett et al., 126 N.J.L. 107, 17 A.2d 778; Corrigan v. Portland Traction Co., 157 Or. 496, 73 P.2d 378; Cooke v. Elmore Coach Line, Inc. (Del.), 180 A. 782; White v. Chappell, 14 S.E.2d 843.
The 1938 legislature, by Chapter 200, enacted what is known as the Uniform Highway Traffic Regulation Act. The third specification of negligence contained in the declaration is predicated on the foregoing statute. As far as we have been able to ascertain, our court has not yet had occasion to decide the particular question of the applicability of this statute to such temporary stops as here under consideration, and we are, therefore, remitted to the realm of sound, common sense and some decisions of the courts construing kindred statutes.
However, in the case at bar, even if it be assumed for the purpose of argument that the bus was stopped on the highway in violation of the statute, we are of the opinion that such was the remote cause, and that the negligence of the driver of the Chevrolet automobile was the sole and proximate cause of the injuries here complained of.
Hochberger v. G.R. Wood, Inc. (N.J.), 12 A.2d 689; Locklear v. Southeastern Stages, Inc. (S.C.), 8 S.E.2d 321.
The operator of a bus, when discharging passenger in a safe place, does not owe the duty to warn passenger of approaching vehicles.
Waldron v. Southwestern Bus Co., supra; Locke v. Ford (Ga.), 187 S.E. 715; Jordan v. Wiggins, supra.
To hold appellants liable, appellee must show that the negligence of appellants was the direct, proximate cause of his injury.
Crosby v. Burge, 190 Miss. 739, 1 So.2d 504; 4 LaBatt's Master and Servant (2 Ed.), par. 1520; 50 C.J. 839.
In the case at bar, there could have been no injury whatever to this little boy, except for the two new, active and independent intervening forces, namely, the automobile driven by Mrs. Ridgeway and the walking of the little boy in front of the automobile. Most assuredly, this appellant had no part in activating either of these forces. If the car of Mrs. Ridgeway had not come along, the little boy would not have been injured; and, vice versa, if the little boy had remained at the place where he was deposited, or if he had looked out for the car of Mrs. Ridgeway, he would not have been injured.
There is absolutely no evidence in this record to establish any causal connection between the stopping of this bus and the death of this boy.
Homer W. Pittman and Currie Currie, all of Hattiesburg, for appellees.
The wanton negligence and the unlawful violation of Section 90, Article 13, General Laws of Mississippi, 1938, by the driver of the common carrier motor bus proximately caused or contributed to the injury and death of the child.
Capital Motor Lines v. Gillette (Ala.), 177 So. 881.
A bus driver has the duty, required of common carriers of passengers for hire, of exercising highest degree of care.
Capital Motor Lines v. Gillette, supra.
One who negligently creates a condition from which danger arises through other agencies, reasonably to be anticipated, may proximately contribute to the resultant injury.
Capital Motor Lines v. Gillette, supra.
One guilty of negligence concurring with another's negligence cannot escape resulting liability to a third person on ground that the other could have avoided effects of negligence.
Capital Motor Lines v. Gillette, supra.
To render one liable, it is sufficient that his negligence, concurring with one or more efficient causes other than plaintiff's fault, is proximate cause of injury.
Capital Motor Lines v. Gillette, supra.
If occurrence of intervening cause might reasonably have been anticipated, it will not interrupt connection between original cause and injury.
Russell v. Williams, 168 Miss. 181, 151 So. 372.
Intervening act that combines with negligent act of third person to harm another does not become "superseding cause" where it is a normal response to situation created by negligence of third person and manner in which it is done is not extraordinarily negligent.
Superior Oil Co. et al. v. Richmond et al., 172 Miss. 407, 159 So. 850.
Original negligence of another is not superseded by intervening act of person injured unless such person's conduct is so extraordinarily hazardous that party guilty of original negligence could not have realized that injured party might so act.
Superior Oil Co. et al. v. Richmond et al., supra.
The proof in this case shows that Martin, the driver of this motor bus, put this little boy off right in the face of the automobile which struck him and killed him when he stepped around from behind the bus in the street, crossing the highway on his way home as Martin knew he would have to do when he put him off of the bus.
Ellis v. Hamilton Street Railroad Co., 47 Ont. L. Rep. 526; Topeka City R. Co. v. Higgs, 38 Kan. 383; Washington G.R. Co. v. Harmon, 147 U.S. 571, 37 L.Ed. 284, 13 S.Ct. 557; McGovern v. Interurban Railway Co. (Iowa), 111 N.W. 412.
A passenger on alighting from a street car is more or less subject to the conditions in which the carrier has placed him.
Wallace v. Wilmington, etc., R. Co., 13 Del. 529; Johnson v. Washington Water Power Co., 62 Wn. 619; 10 C.J. 626, par. 1049.
See also Macon R., etc., Co. v. Vining, 120 Ga. 511; Birmingham R., etc., Co. v. O'Brien, 185 Ala. 617.
There is a rule of law to the effect that if a railroad company, a street railway company or any other common carrier carries a passenger safely to his destination and puts him off in a reasonably safe place and gives him reasonable time and opportunity to disembark, that when the passenger safely lands in a safe place the relation of passenger and carrier is ended, but there is a well settled and thoroughly established exception to that rule, and that exception is that the carrier in providing or selecting the place where he stops for his passenger to get off his vehicle stops in a dangerous place, or does not select a reasonably safe place, and the passenger is injured and such negligence of the carrier contributed in any manner, no matter how, to the injury, the relation of passenger and carrier is not terminated and the carrier is liable because of its negligence in not providing and furnishing a reasonably safe place for the debarkation of its passenger. This exception is thoroughly established under the common law.
Turk v. Norfolk, etc., R. Co., 75 W. Va. 623.
See also Rossman v. Georgia Railroad, etc., Co., 146 Ga. 264.
Where the negligent act of defendant naturally induced or afforded opportunity for the subsequent act of a child, such act being of a character common to youthful indiscretion, and which, concurring with defendant's earlier wrongful act, produced the injuries complained of, the defendant will, in general, be held liable. Children, wherever they go, must be expected to act upon childish instincts and impulses, a fact which all persons who are sui juris must consider and take precautions accordingly.
Dixon v. Bell, 5 M. S. 198; Lynch v. Nurdin, 1 Q.B. 29, 41 E.C.L. 422; Binford v. Johnston, 82 Ind. 426; Osage City v. Larkin, 40 Kan. 206; Westerfield v. Levis, 43 La. Ann. 63; Lane v. Atlantic Works, 111 Mass. 136; Keffe v. Railroad Co., 21 Minn. 207; Nagel v. Mo. Pac. R. Co., 75 Mo. 653; Harriman v. Railroad Co., 45 Ohio St. 11; Pittsburg, etc., R. Co. v. Caldwell, 74 Pa. St. 421; Ficker v. Cleveland, etc., Ry. Co., 9 Ohio S. C.P. Dec. 804; Birge v. Gardiner, 19 Conn. 507; Watson on Damages for Personal Injuries, p. 129, par. 111.
It cannot be held as a matter of law that the driver of this bus was not guilty of gross negligence under the common law — all law — in so stopping said common carrier motor bus at said dangerous place and permitting or allowing this little boy to get off unattended, knowing that he would have to pass over the highway in order to get to his home. It cannot be held that the driver of the bus did not violate Section 90, Article 13, General Laws of Mississippi, 1938. It cannot be affirmatively held that this case was wrongfully, illegally or improperly submitted to the jury for its determination.
Argued orally by T.C. Hannah, for appellant, and by N.T. Currie and Homer W. Pittman, for appellee.
On February 27, 1942, appellant was an authorized carrier of passengers by motorbus between the City of Harriesburg and a point known as Palmer's Crossing and along a heavily traveled highway. About five o'clock on that afternoon, Ray Bullock, a boy about twelve years old, took passage on one of appellant's busses to go from the city to his home south of the corporate limits of the city. The place at which the boy wanted to leave the bus was at a regular stop on the west side of the highway near a mail-box, which box was situated 41 feet south of a concrete bridge. The bridge was 16 feet wide, and the highway pavement was 18 feet wide, but on each side of the pavement were safe and sound shoulders 5 feet wide made of gravel. Thus the highway, including the shoulders, was 28 feet wide. The bus was about 7 feet wide and 25 feet long.
Just before the bridge was reached, the boy gave the customary signal to the driver by pressing the buzzer, which constituted an order to the driver to let the boy off at or near the mail-box stop, already mentioned. The driver obeyed the signal, and as the front end of the bus cleared the bridge the driver turned the bus to the right and came to a stop, so that the right front end of the bus was on the west-side shoulder, leaving, however, adequate room for the boy to alight on the shoulder; but the bus did not go far enough to bring both the front and rear right sides thereof parallel with the highway so as to give as much highway clearance as practicable, but when the bus stopped, it was then standing obliquely with the rear end of the bus about four feet south of the bridge and its left rear wheel about two feet to the left or east of the center of the pavement.
The exit door was at the front right-hand side of the bus, and when it came to a stop, the driver opened the door and let the boy out, and the boy alighted on the gravel shoulder west of the pavement. As already mentioned, the highway opposite this point was heavily traveled, and as the bus driver opened the door to let the boy out the driver saw an automobile driven by a woman approaching from the south at a high rate of speed. The driver, however, said nothing to the boy. When the boy alighted, he did not remain until the bus could move away, but he proceeded at once and evidently on the run along the gravel shoulder on the west side of the bus and around its rear and onto the pavement and into the path of the woman aforementioned, and was hit by the woman's car, resulting in injuries to him from which he died the next day.
The boy was employed as a newsboy, delivering newspapers in the City of Hattiesburg. His home was south of the city, as stated, and was located about a quarter of a mile to the east of the highway and in direction opposite said mail-box stop. The means which he had customarily been using to get home after the conclusion of his duties for the day as delivery boy was to take the bus and get off at the point already mentioned.
Appellees, as the next of kin of the decedent, instituted suit against the bus company and the woman who was driving the northbound automobile, and recovered judgment in the trial court against both, from which judgment the bus company alone has appealed.
As against the bus company appellees averred: (1) That the manner in which the bus stopped so as not to leave the clearance required by statute on its east or highway side was an actionable negligence; (2) that it was the duty of the bus driver to warn the boy of the approaching automobile; (3) that it was negligence to let the boy off while the approaching northbound automobile was in sight; (4) that the place where the boy was let off was a dangerous place so that the relationship of carrier and passenger had not terminated when the injury occurred; and (5) that the position of the bus constituted an unlawful obstruction and was a continuing or concurrent negligence which contributed to the ultimate event of the injury.
Although it was proved, as stated, that the position in which the bus stood was violative of Section 90, Chap. 200, Laws 1938, as construed in the recent case, Teche Lines, Inc., v. Danforth (Miss.), 12 So.2d 784, not yet reported [in State report], we are of the opinion that this was not the proximate cause of the injury, and we shall reach and dispose of the other contentions during the further course of this opinion.
Although one may be negligent, yet if another, acting independently and voluntarily, puts in motion another and intervening cause which efficiently thence leads in unbroken sequence to the injury, the latter is the proximate cause and the original negligence is relegated to the position of a remote and, therefore, a nonactionable cause. Negligence which merely furnishes the condition or occasion upon which injuries are received, but does not put in motion the agency by or through which the injuries are inflicted, is not the proximate cause thereof. The question is, did the facts constitute a succession of events so linked together as to make a natural whole, or was there some new and independent cause intervening between the alleged wrong and the injury? 38 Am. Jur., p. 702; Thompson v. Mississippi Cent. R. Co., 175 Miss. 547, 554, 166 So. 353. And so say all the authorities, among which, as a striking illustration, is Bufkin v. Louisville N.R. Co., 161 Miss. 594, 137 So. 517.
Here, according to the substantially undisputed testimony, the bus was placed, so far as the exit door was concerned, so that the boy could and did alight on a sound and safe gravel shoulder, not on, but away from, the paved or traveled portion of the highway. It was a perfactly safe place for him to stand and remain until the bus should move forward on its accustomed way. The relation between the carrier and the boy as a passenger was thereupon at an end, and the carrier had the right to assume that the boy would so remain until the bus moved away, as is customarily done by passengers when alighting from busses or street cars. But instead of doing so, the boy of his own volition set himself in motion, and passed rapidly down the west side of the bus and out from its rear and into the traveled highway where he was struck and killed, as already stated.
It is obvious, therefore, that if this is not clearly a case of an intervening independent cause, it would be next to impossible to put a case where that doctrine would actually apply. And it is appropriate to repeat that the passenger was not put off in the traveled portion of the highway where cars were passing on the same side of the bus from which the passenger alighted, as was the case in Wood v. North Carolina Public-Service Corporation, 174 N.C. 697, 94 S.E. 459, 1 A.L.R. 942, on which appellees so strongly rely. Nor have we here a case where there was a collision with the bus and an injury to a passenger then therein or to a person in the other colliding vehicle, and cases dealing with a situation of that kind are not in point here.
A number of cases dealing with a parallel state of facts have been decided in the courts of other states. The case which appears to have been cited and quoted from more often than any other is Waldron v. Southwestern Bus Co., 42 Ohio App. 549, 182 N.E. 596, and we quote that opinion in full:
"The plaintiff was a passenger in the day-time on a bus of the defendant company from Norwalk . . . intending to alight at Townsend, about seven miles east of that city. The bus had a regular stopping place just before crossing an intersecting road at that point, but on the day in question failed to stop at the usual place. Miss Waldron then spoke to the operator, and he continued to proceed until he had crossed the intersecting road, and then stopped. The driver thereupon opened the bus door for her, and she alighted close to the southern edge of the pavement, walked west to the rear of the bus, which immediately started on, and then waited for a number of automobiles to pass which were traveling in an easterly direction. She then started to walk north across the road, and after taking several steps was struck and injured by a west-bound automobile. . . .
"The defendant company, while she was a passenger, owed her a high degree of care for her safety, but she alighted from the bus in a place of safety and the relation of carrier and passenger thereupon terminated. The proximate cause of her subsequent injury was either her own negligence in walking in front of an approaching automobile, or the negligence of the operator of such automobile, and the defendant was in no sense responsible for the injury resulting therefrom. Having discharged the passenger in a place of safety, there could be no causal connection between that act and the injury which she suffered. She was familiar with the surrounding conditions, and the operator of the bus owed no duty to warn her of approaching automobiles."
In Lewis v. Pacific Greyhound Lines, 147 Or. 588, 34 P.2d 616, 618, 96 A.L.R. 718, it was complained that the bus company had discharged the plaintiff on the wrong side of the highway, in the nighttime, without warning him of approaching vehicles, and the court said: "In the instant case the evidence discloses without contradiction that the plaintiff was not injured while engaged in alighting from the bus. It also appears . . . that he was discharged as a passenger on the right side of the bus. He went out the front door unto the gravel shoulder of the pavement. . . . After having thus alighted in safety, did the relationship of carrier and passenger continue while he walked 35 feet to the rear of the bus and half way across the pavement, which was 16 feet wide? We think not. Unquestionably the plaintiff walked from a place of safety into a place of danger. . . . No case has been cited, based upon a similar state of fact, where liability has been sustained. To hold otherwise would make the carrier an insurer." And, after quoting with approval the opinion in the Waldron case, supra, the court said further: "Assuming, but not conceding, that the defendant bus company was negligent in failing to discharge the plaintiff as a passenger on the west side of the highway . . . such negligence had no causal connection with the injury sustained. . . . We can reach but one conclusion, viz., that the proximate cause of the injuries of which plaintiff complains was either the negligence of the driver of the car which struck him or his own negligence in failing to exercise due care to avoid being injured while undertaking to cross the highway."
In Corrigan v. Portland Traction Co., 157 Or. 496, 73 P.2d 378, the material facts were substantially similar to the case at bar, and the opinion, in denying liability, quoted from and approved both the Waldron and Lewis cases, supra, and this was the case of a thirteen-year-old boy.
In Greeson v. Davis, 62 Ga. App. 667, 9 S.E.2d 690, 692, a school bus driver was charged with negligence in discharging a school girl fourteen years old on the east side of the highway, instead of the west side next to her home, and without warning or assisting her, when the highway was being heavily traveled at the time. The evidence showed that the bus stopped at the customary place, and that the door was opened so that the child could alight, and did alight, on the shoulder way from the main highway, and the child thereupon ran around to the rear of the bus and into the highway when she was struck by a rapidly moving truck. The court said that the carrier is "under a duty to deposit his passenger at a reasonably safe place for alighting and crossing the street, but is under no obligation to wait until approaching automobiles have stopped or to warn him of the usual dangers of traffic which in the passenger's exercise of ordinary care would be avoidable;" and the court went on further to point out that there was no occasion for making an exception as to a child shown to be of such age and experience as to appreciate the danger of the situation. This case was approved and followed in Jordan v. Wiggins, 66 Ga. App. 534, 18 S.E.2d 512, 515, which involved a child of the same age and a similar state of facts, and the court there said further: "The duty of the bus driver was discharged when she reached the place of safety he had arranged for her by causing her to alight on the shoulder of the road, and no duty rested upon him to warn her of the danger of approaching automobiles which in the exercise of ordinary care she could have avoided."
We forbear the lengthening of this opinion by a further digest of cases of which there are a number of others in point, but we will add a reference to Cain v. Georgia Power Co., 53 Ga. App. 483, 186 S.E. 229 and Powers v. Standard Oil Co., 98 N.J.L. 730, 119 A. 273, both of which contain valuable discussions on proximate cause, and especially the Powers case, and each of which involved the death of a child when the negligence charged was the unlawful manner in which the bus or truck was parked or stopped and around which the child went into the traveled highway and was killed by a passing vehicle.
All these cases hold, and we concur therein, that, where the facts are such as we have here before us, (a) the injury is the remote and not the proximate consequence of the negligent or unlawful position in which the bus was stopped; (b) the bus driver was under no duty to warn of the danger of approaching vehicles; and (c) when the passenger has alighted at a sound place off and away from the traveled portion of the highway and where the passenger could safely stand and remain, the relation of carrier and passenger is thereby at an end.
The extreme contention urged by appellees that the bus driver was negligent in opening the bus door and allowing the boy to alight when an approaching automobile was in sight, carries its own refutation when it is considered that on heavily traveled highways, as was the highway here, there is scarcely a time when an automobile is not within sight either from the front or from the rear. The reason for which the public has called into service the transportation facilities of common-carrier busses on the public highways, is that the people living along such highways may have a convenient and economical means to go to and from stopping places adjacent to their homes or places of business or employment. Were any such rule adopted and enforced as urged by appellees, it would make public busses devices for imprisoning passengers, immobile on the roadside, instead of vehicles for transportation. The duty of care as to safety is not the only duty of carriers — the obligation to transport all passengers with a reasonable degree of dispatch is a duty of equal dignity. Compare Hancock v. Illinois Cent. R. Co., 158 Miss. 668, 131 So. 83. The duty of care required of a common carrier by motor bus is that which at the same time is consistent with the practical conduct of its authorized business. Teche Lines, Inc., v. Keyes, 187 Miss. 780, 786, 193 So. 620, 126 A.L.R. 1080.
Appellees have earnestly urged that all that has above been said should not be applied in the case of a twelve-year-old child, or to any child under fourteen, upon the presumption that a child under that age cannot be charged with contributory negligence. In our own recent case of Tri-State Transit Company v. Lee, 191 Miss. 42, 2 So.2d 547, it was held that a bus company is under no obligation to transport a thirteen-year-old child with any more care or consideration than an adult, which duty is to exercise care to carry him to his destination within a reasonable time; and the court cited Gage v. Illinois Cent. R. Co., 75 Miss. 17, 21 So. 657, which was of a child only seven years old.
But even if it may be said that this rule should be varied according to some peculiar or special set of circumstances, there is no occasion to do so in this case; for, as already stated, the lad here injured was employed as a newsboy in one of our largest cities, an employment which gave him such ample and daily opportunities to observe and learn the dangers of highway traffic as to make him the equal, if not the superior, in that respect as compared with the average adult. See on this point the Greeson and Jordan cases, supra. Moreover, the dominant point here involved is not contributory negligence, but proximate cause, and, as observed in Howell v. Illinois Cent. Railroad Co., 75 Miss. 242, 251, 21 So. 746, 36 L.R.A. 545, wherein advantage was sought to be taken by the plaintiff in the fact that the injured boy was only thirteen years old and could not be charged with contributory negligence, the court pointed out that contributory negligence has no place in the equation when there is no causal connection between the defendant's negligence and the subsequent injury.
Finally, it is urged by appellees that had the bus been stopped in compliance with Section 90 of the Highway Traffic Act, there would have been several feet additional clearance at the rear of the bus, and this would have furnished the lad a wider range of vision by which he might have seen the approaching automobile in time to draw back, and that it would have given the automobile driver a wider clearance by which she might have swerved so as to miss the boy. Similar contentions were made in both the Powers and Cain cases, supra, and were disallowed. In our own case, Bufkin v. Louisville N. Railroad Co., supra, a like argument, founded in speculation, was made — that had the railroad not been violating the law by the excessive speed, the persons who are running to catch the train would not have had to run and, therefore, would not have collided with the plaintiff, knocking him under the cars, and that save for the excessive speed plaintiff would have had time to extricate himself before the wheels reached him, and that, therefore, the negligence of the railroad was a continuing and concurrent negligence. The court said in response to the argument that [ 161 Miss. 594, 137 So. 518] "the negligence of appellee [the railroad] was going on before appellant's injury, during the time of his injury, and continued thereafter," but that nevertheless the proximate cause of the injury was the "independent, intervening negligence" of the person who knocked the plaintiff down. He was the person who put in motion an intervening cause which efficiently thence led in unbroken sequence to the injury.
It follows that appellant bus company was entitled to the peremptory charge which was requested by it, and that a judgment to that effect must be rendered here. There having been no appeal by the woman who was driving the automobile which struck the boy, the judgment against her stands as rendered by the trial court.
Reversed, and judgment here for appellant.